Day 4 2/20 Touring Christchurch

Our plan of the day is to have the buffet breakfast at the hotel, go explore the park across the street from the hotel, the botanical garden, and then go on the hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city.

Lovely buffet breakfast with some unusual things. They have cooked veggies on the breakfast line and a flaky rectangular thing I later found out people put water, milk, or yogurt on to eat. I tried it plain, and it flaked apart. We got a map and are setting out.

The botanical gardens sure wonderful we could spend all day here.

There is a large grassy area, then the botanical gardens.

It is very disorienting to us to stay to the left!

Parts are so dense, almost like a jungle. Then into the rose garden.

Then onto many other flowers.

Lovely murals after we left the park.

The hop on hop off bus, which is actually rail tram car. I like the old-fashioned look!

It was full and difficult to get pictures from the windows.

 

Lots of art.

Again, it is so disorienting to have traffic coming at you in the wrong lane!

We got off at stop 2 and bought gondola tickets and tram tickets to get there.

We took the bus back to Christchurch and then started scouting for food. There are quite a few pedestrian-only streets. And everybody is so nice. We had lunch at Riverside Market. And indulged in sweets afterward.

We saw the same peace pole they have at church.

We didn't indulge in the gelato. We were too full from the other sweets after lunch.

Then back to our bus for the rest of our tour of town. They have a lot of murals here.

When we passed the fountain again more jets were going off.

This is the only place outside of California where the giant sequoias grow.

Huge Monterey Cyperus tree.

When we got back to the hotel, we washed clothes, packed for the bike trip, and rested. I'm going to try to put all the bike things in the Osprey. Tomorrow, we start the bike tour.